Apple Macs targeted in first ever known Ransomware attack

Ransomware are type of malwares which lock the computer files and demand for a fee to release your system.
Previously, there have been similar attacks on iOS users, where users were asked to pay a amount to unlock their iPhones.

The Security Research group, “Palo Alto Networks” have announced that they have detected a ransomware on Mac machines and asking its user to pay the ransom using Bitcoins. These systems got affected after the installation of BitTorrent Client called Transmission. The Ransomware has been named as “KeRanger” and its the first fully functional ransomware seen on the OS X platform.

As the KeRanger application was signed with a valid Mac app development certificate; therefore, it was able to bypass Apple’s Gatekeeper protection.

After being informed of the malware, Apple has revoked the developers’ certificate on infected software to prevent it from getting installed on more machines.

Transmission has released an update to their installer and warned users running ver 2.90 to upgrade to ver. 2.92, as it will remove the OSX.Keyranger.A file from the mac machine.